Somewhere to Go

It’s been probably four years since I’ve sent out an update on my life. So much has changed since 2020 (my last update), so here’s a summary of what happened.

• I moved to Copenhagen for one year
  
• Ended a long-term romantic relationship 
  
• Had my first solo painting show in San Francisco
  
• Moved to New York and got an art studio
  
• Began Interruptions¹
• Worked through hard relationship dynamics of all types
  
• Connected with music again
  
• Got laid off and got a new job
  

Experiencing these tribulations left me to where I am now, where I am slowly re-building a thoughtful infrastructure and clear path to bear me fruit. My brain is like a camera that never turns off, and I am directing the film that is my biopic. I’m writing this publicly, because  the story is not mine anymore, it is yours to hold.

When I got laid off earlier this year, my panic set me off into a meditative state of constant creation. For three months, I dialed in and worked nearly every day on a variety of creative and professional mediums until I landed a new job. I began learning Ableton, created playlists, hosted an Interruption, visited the West coast thrice, painted consistently, revamped my portolios, did an audit and overhaul of my social medias, released YouTube videos, and purged my posessions. 

The emotional foundation that I built for myself proved to be well reinforced during these volatile circumstances: my community showed up for me as I sorted and processed my feelings to make sense of it all.

I couldn’t sleep for those three months², as being forcibly submerged into the unknown led to an existential and identity crisis. While I knew I had to feel and face these growing pains as they were happening, I kept wondering: where am I going next? All I knew was that moving forward, I needed to set up a more sustainable lifestyle in order for me to feel good about everything I tough and breathe life into.

Since I moved, my adoration of New York and my desire to kindle community overrode other priorities, and the systems that I set up for myself for success, collapsed due to my lack of maintenance. My life became a symptom of my poor habits and routines, and as a result spiraled myself into an identity crisis. The vastness of the city and the freshness of a breakup inspired me to ride the possibilities of my personal style, which expanded so far in pinkness that it snapped me right back to the core of who I am: I found myself wearing black again, a clean slate for me to throw colour on.

Both my job and my vocation required me to make miniscule detailed and abstract high-level decisions, and I could not spent more energy deciding what to put on my body. So neutrals it is, and boy I have never felt so good. If you know me irl or url, you know that I stress that my opinions may change daily and that I am an ever-growing woman, but my values stay the same and this world-building will only continue to prove the validity of my personal philosophies.

This is the first time I’m able to begin making a home for myself. For the last decade, I’ve moved every year, and this is my first time standing still and having an opportunity to develop my philosophy and voice. In turn, my art has evolved from elemental compositions to more complex spirals. Even if I can’t tell you, I know I will always be able to show you where I am.

During the height of this identity crisis, I studied my habits and routines to unearth the root of my growing nuisances. What I came to realise was that ever since I moved to New York, I stopped using my computer for leisure and personal use. It’s shocking—the girl that was raised by the internet³, stopped going on the internet.

I love websites and have always utilised the web in one form or another to express and document my thoughts, whether that be on Tumblr, Youtube, Soundcloud, Spotify, etc. My creative rise came about Flickr and TeenVogue, when I joined their forums and found myself active amongst their communities of creatives who posted outfit photos or the 365 self-portrait projects. I adored the work and lifestyle of Kalie Garrett and Olivia Bee and Nirrimi Firebrace, and still follow their pursuits. It felt like we all grew up together as our parallel values paved way for our artistic futures that we now get to live. We made this dream for us come true, we did it through fostering connections on the internet.

The internet allows my introversion to thrive, and to thrive I must allow my type-A brain to guide my life. I’ve always been one to create guidelines and organisation, which I believe maximise creative output and self-discovery. Hard work ethic drives output, and consistent soulful iteration creates meaningful value. I force myself to suffer and endure the rigor of these processes and systems, in order to be able to pour heart into making this life that I adore, a continual reality for me. Otherwise, the fantasy will stay a fantasy and I will be chained to being at the mercy of someone else’s dream.

During my time in New York, I abandoned my computer and these systems that I set. I found myself frenzied with painting or socialising, but what I really was fretting about was surviving in this city for the first year alone. I enjoy being alone, but I wanted to live this first year with people I could love and could love me. It wasn’t a hard ask, and I found some friends who wanted to be along for the ride :)

Despite going off the computer, I used Instagram stories as a medium and found it successful for what I needed to do: express myself authentically in the moment, and experience feelings of regret, joy, proudness, in posting my in-flight thoughts. After all, a photo could just be a photo, but for me, sharing the photo was sharing more. Nothing is deep, but everything is deep. The only difference is your choice in understanding. 

There’s always been an inherent desire to be perceived as mysterious, cool, but it fights my inherent self that is vulnerable and open on social media. I have so much to say and so many vessels of expressing. I posted a bit on YouTube and will continue to do so whenever I want, and post on Soundcloud as well because why not. 

I now understand that to be seen and to be accepted, you must show yourself—your vulnerable self. Fortunately, sharing has always been a strength of mine, I’d just like to be more intentional moving forward. My time has felt more precious than ever, and if I can hold your hand for a second through the internet, I hope it can feel like it lasts forever. 


 

During this time, I threw myself into intensive playlist-making which led me to discovering an abundance of new music and artists. It was so freeing, for my body to finally allow itself to get out of fight/flight mode and push myself onwards to discovery (a scary and vulnerable place to be). On a lovely Thursday evening, I went to see Yuka Honda (Eucademix, Ciba Matto) and during the middle of her performance, I had a life-alterating realisation: I think I’m painting sound. 

It’s all conjecture at this point, but I know I’m going somewhere. I’ve been interested in geometry as shown in my first set of paintings, as to which my friend jokingly and endearingy called me “space-age Georgia O’Keeffe”. I’m still slowly reading Flatland as I enjoy the philosophy and romance of math and geometry, and there is something to be said about the composition of a spiral and its embodiment of whimsy and eternality. My visual philosophy involves balancing splendid curves with hard edges. It looks this way, so of course it must sound some way. 

All of expression is a form of language, and there is a relationship between this alphabet that we’ve created for ourselves, and the way we express ourselves out into the world. It’s processing, communication, and then interpretation. 

My first language is technically Chinese, my second is English, and my third is musical notation—my mother is a piano teacher and taught me piano since the age of 5. I grew up listening to her and her students playing classical music everyday, and adopted melody into my personal repertoire of understanding how to listen. At the meantime, I was understanding how to speak. 

I’ve this idea for years now, to create an album that corresponds to a collection of paintings, and a listening party to sum it all together. Originally I had wanted to collaborate with musician friends, but I think I can do it, at least I’ll try. 

I’ve been quite sad as of the last two weeks. This numbness reminds me of the time last year when [redacted] and I sat in grey and blue for the longest time, without even realising it. My body has a way of processing ambiguous emotions, and with the tide of seasons changing, it’s natural that I’m evolving as well. At least I’m still painting. 

The Living Room came to existence when I began to create playlists to cope with my misery, and needed a digital space to share them. I liked the idea of an internet archive of my many states of mind, and was inspired by the concept of a “digital garden”¹, a digital space that hosts current interests and quick links for updates on life.

This is my bid for connection. I’m trying a new way to be seen and heard. 

Restructuring the Living Room is the first foray into organising my life again. I wasn’t satisfied with my first iteration of the Living Room, so I re-designed the current Living Room to align more closely with who I am².

These stitched writing/blog/newsletter is a departure from my previous writing that served more as chapters of my life. I may return to that style of writing, I may not. Either way, the priority is to just write.

I’ve been live ig-story-storytelling for years now, and hand journaling has never been a consistency of mine, so I’m hoping to strengthen my typing muscles again to capture this little life of mine and memorialise it somewhere. It all goes back to words, a powerful tool and language. 
 

My innie. Yes, my 9-5 is product design, why do you think it takes forever for me to finish a painting? My foray in product design and recent stint in creating an entire new website for my portfolio, forced me to evaluate my own process for design decisions.

The rules of design applies to the rules of life. Create the barebones of your idea, play with composition, scale, colour, contrast, rule of thirds. If it looks like a mistake then revise. If something feels right, then evaluate why it feels right. What motifs does your work integrate and what is the story that you are telling? What is your ethos?

My friend told me recently that he thinks I am sculpting more in my painting, rather than painting. 

“There’s a lot of value and contrast in your work. Even with the nuanced onces, light is kind of in there. But it’s different from painting sunlight fallong on a still life. (...) your technique approach is more sculptural where as traditional (like atelier) painters would try to solve it with color and value and tint and hue.

(...) perhaps try the more traditional approaches too since you are painting, but also be honest with yourself that you’re sculpting a bit, so you can look into other sculpting techniques and materials to achieve effects you want.”

It’s true, I am designing my painting more than traditionally painting it. My background in architecture is very much a part of my design ethos, and the intersection between architecture and art and writing (and and and) is very much a part of my personal and experiential world-building. I don’t claim to be an expert in design, but I know that I am good at parts of it. This strong desire to create a beautiful world to exist in, and understand the patterns of how I got there, is just like writing this diary and sharing it with you. It’s self-centered and self-motivated but I just need to show you what I find so profoundly beautiful.

If you’re out and about, if you know of these things, please reach out to me.

1. Glass beads, ceramic beads, handmade beads, a beading shop that is affordable, beads. 
2. A live/work, 1 bedroom apartment, anything like that in an affordable price range.
3. 

I still think about you probably more than you think of me.
Grad school, should I do it?
Unmasking myself and letting myself be funny, even if you don’t think I am.

REQUESTS

READING

⎰Fashioning Identity by Maria Mackinney-Valentin
⎰Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship by Claire Bishop
⎰Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto by Legacy Russell

⎰Speed Racer by Fernanda Abreu (I am very much obsessed with this, like very very much)
⎰The Island Of Kings by Annabelle McBride
⎰Times Like These by Addison Rae
⎰It’s An Uphill Climb To The Bottom by Walter Jackson
⎰English Renaissance, Landscape Series (1987) by John Themis
⎰Empire Des Pulsions by Mert Seger
⎰Flowers Are Dying, By the Way by The Happies

⎰Fashion Neurosis Podcast with Bella Freud
⎰YOU Season 5
⎰Handmaid’s Tale season 6
⎰Antz
⎰Squid Game Season 3

⎰Unified Goods—recommended by Niki Colet
⎰Potato noodle salad with seaweed, daikon, edamame, peanut sauce
⎰Mindy Seu—an incredible thinker/designer/researcher/writer
⎰Mangoes
⎰Novella Parigini

⎰Chrystie Bag by Freja—I don’t own this yet but I want to
⎰Vintage silk scarves
⎰The Bibio Project—I love beads and netting
⎰Estate sale pearls
⎰Uma Wang ballet flats from TRR, inspired by Rachel Nguyen